This is all stuff I've had semi-done for yonks now, but I've been seized by enough of a fey mood to fill in the gaps and thrust it out. Whether it's doneor goodis another question, but there are no more gaps!

The ship was far, far too quiet. Loghain did not like it.

The sound - or rather its absence - was something she'd noticed almost as soon as they'd departed the Assertive's hanger, and try as she might to ignore it and let it fade into the background she really couldn't, because it was the background, and she was so used to all void travel being accompanied by constant, comforting noise that it suddenly not being there made her keep thinking something had gone wrong.

It had a clinical coldness and lack of spirit. It reminded her of her brief time spent aboard the Normandy, and also put her in mind of the tau, particularly the one tau voidship she had had the opportunity to actually board. That one, too, had been unnervingly quiet and clean - barring the bloodstains, blast marks, and tau corpses, of course, but Loghain had always been blessed with a muscular imagination and so it had still been fairly easy to visualise what the ship must have been like in operation, prior to the boarding.

Soulless, might have been the word.

But that was all by the by and not really an important issue. Her being uncomfortable was not especially important, and in the course of her duties she'd had to endure far worse. Comparatively, this was luxury.

The freighter was - or should have been, if Magos Crave was as good as his word when he'd said he understood how to make the ship go - underway to the local mass relay, there to do whatever one did at a mass relay and then to carry on elsewhere to their destination. Loghain had done a circuit of the ship to get a feel for the place and had found it broadly uninteresting. It was certainly a freighter.

By turns, her circuit brought her back to the helm, where Crave was gingerly sitting bolt upright at the controls, apparently not wanting to relax into a seat not properly sanctioned by the Omnissiah. Loghain would have thought that he might have loosened up a little about these things by now, but apparently not. Oh well, give it time.

"How goes it?" She asked.

"Hmm?" Crave replied, not turning around.

Loghain moved up behind the chair and rested her hand on the back. The controls and readouts - a very glitzy-looking hololithic-esque affair - meant absolutely nothing to her, and all she could see out of the prow viewport (assuming it was one) was blue swirliness. This meant nothing to her either, other than her knowing this wasn't space travel as she was entirely used to.

"The ship. Taking to it?" She asked.

"Not really, no," Crave said, grimacing as he moved his hands over the controls, depressing bits of light with his fingertips and apparently having some sort of effect by doing this. These sorts of interfaces weren't entirely unknown to him (or to Loghain) but were rare, and dealing with one usually such a fraught experience that the Magos was constantly expecting it to just break. That it didn't was deeply unsettling.

"I don't really blame you. Figuring it out, though?" Loghain asked.

"Of course. It is, despite its numerous shortcomings, still a machine, after all."

"Reassuring to know."

"We should be dropping out of superluminal travel in a moment. I was about to contact you."

"Oh?"

"Yes. You did not provide any further details on our destination beyond where you wished this relay to take us. After that, I have no idea. Unless you'd like me to guess?" He asked, sparing her a sideways glance.

"After we get there. My understanding is these relays are point-to-point?"

"I only have whatever information you have given me, but that is my understanding, yes. Minor relays seem to link up one another, operating on a smaller scale, comparatively speaking, while major ones cover longer distances and link to one another only. Or something like that. As far as we are concerned this one can take us closer to where you want us to go but, as I said, I do not know what is meant to happen after that."

"After that I'll tell you what is meant to happen. I'll tell all of you, in fact. We'll have a sit down."

Crave reached out and flicked something and with a distinct lack of any obvious deacceleration the freighter dropped back to a gentle cruising speed, the wash of blue outside the front viewport going back to nice, star-spackled black. The relay dominated the view ahead. Loghain hadn't actually ever had a proper look at one before. Impressive, in their own perverse, alien way, she supposed.

"Might it be too much to hope that one day we, your hard-working entourage, can be trusted with a full travel itinerary?" Crave asked as he guided the freighter towards the relay, still not looking at her.

"I'm not that sort of Inquisitor. I don't know any of those sorts of Inquisitors," said Loghain.

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Are we likely to make use of any more of those, ah, relays, at least? Can I be told that? They are of alien manufacture, I believe you said?"

Part of the general background information included in the briefing package she had supplied, made up of her own observations and notes ripped from any local sources she'd been able to lay her hands on, just to bring her team all more-or-less up to something resembling speed, prior to the proper briefing which would be given once they were actually, properly underway. Loghain gave a nod.

"Allegedly. Ancient, long-dead aliens. Or alternatively ancient, still-around alien machines bent on genocide and simply biding their time, depending on who you talk to. One way or another things that were built by someone or something and then left around to be puzzled over and used by those many years later. Like us. Does that make you uncomfortable?" Loghain asked, and he looked at her as though she'd asked an especially stupid question and was insulted that he was now obliged to provide and incredibly obvious answer.

Particularly given that he was wholly aware that Loghain full-well knew what his answer was going to be anyway.

"Of course it does. Not so much I won't do this, obviously, but it still makes me uncomfortable. It seems absurd to place so much reliance on technological devices of alien provenance, not to mention ones the true functioning of which you are unable to properly determine."

Loghain bit her tongue.

"It does, doesn't it?" She said.

If Crave picked up on what she'd been putting down, he gave no sign, focused instead on manipulating the controls, hands moving gingerly across the haptic interface and mechadendrites twitching lightly as his implants sought common ground with the ship's systems. Various bits and pieces lit up promisingly, and the ship lurched, though you'd hardly notice unless you'd been paying attention - most unsettling.

"Establishing a connection. Communicating with the relay. Entering coordinates and plotting course. All appears well. Omnissiah guide your lowly and trusting servant…"

Loghain braced herself for, well, something, something big. What she was something, true, but it fell far short of her expectations. Technically she had already been through a relay, she knew, but she hadn't been in any position to observe what it had involved, and she'd rather pictured something a little more grandiose. In the event, it just seemed to be like moving really, really fast. Sort of. It was hard to really perceive much of anything from where she was standing.

And then they arrived.

She waited for something else to happen, but nothing did. Just space, and them drifting in it.

"...that was it?" She asked, quietly. Crave seemed as baffled as she was.

"That was, apparently, it," he said, checking some things to confirm that, yes, that was it.

Had she had eyelids Loghain might have blinked. Since she didn't she just stood there dumbly for a second.

"Huh."

She had no idea what to make of that. Interesting, if nothing else.

"And you are sure we cannot bring this vessel back to our own galaxy?" Crave asked, unprompted, looping back to a subject he'd brought up with her before. "As profane as it is, its dismantling might yield interesting findings. The further light it might shed on parallel technological development and discovery alone would-"

A problem of the less-orthodox tech priests was their tendency to get onto tangents. The more orthodox they got, the less talkative they got. Agreeably they also tended to get more violent at that end of the spectrum, too, so it probably all balanced out somehow. Either way, Loghain knew it was best to step in now and cut off whatever diversion Crave was starting out on:

"Not yet, and not this one. This one we're returning to Jarrion intact once we don't need it anymore. I did tell him I would. Besides, even if we did take it back to our own galaxy, how would you get it anywhere? No relays in our galaxy, are there? Or did you feel like spending a few years onboard while we went to whichever forge world is closest to the space hole?"

"I have explorator connections who could organise to have a vessel waiting who could collect and convey us," he said without missing a beat, suggesting that this issue had crossed his mind before. Loghain was quietly glad she wasn't the only one thinking ahead.

Didn't change things, though.

"That would involve spreading the knowledge of this development further than I want earlier than I want, so no. Good idea though, perhaps later. We're not in a rush, are we?"

"Are we?"

"We're not."

"Well then. As you say, Inquisitor."

"Your next co-ordinates are here," Loghain said, concentrating briefly to flick the appropriate information into Crave's head. Crave, who hadn't been expecting this, reeled slightly, but recovered. She did that sort of thing a lot, though this time felt a lot smoother, somehow. Less resistance? Something. "Set us on a course and then meet in this thing's mess in an hour. I shall reveal all."

"As you say, Inquisitor," Crave repeated, another mechadendrite snaking out from somewhere inside his robes and starting to sniff out a fresh socket to interface with. Loghain did wonder where tech priests kept all those tentacles, though it wasn't a subject she wanted to dwell on.

An hour later, there was the briefing.

The freighter's mess was what might charitably be called 'austere' or 'modest' but was in reality just small and not especially well appointed. This did not matter, however, as all was required for the briefing was a flat surface and seating for at least four people, which the mess had. Al Bet did take up two seats haphazardly shoved together, but it was still fine.

Adept Watlington had set up, at Loghain's behest, a hololithic projector, one she'd brought specially for occasions such as this. It was sitting on the table, hence the need for the table. Everyone else, barring Loghain, was sitting around the table, waiting for her to start. It took her a slightly-embarrassing length of time to work out how to dim the lights, but once she did she began.

"What we have here is an exciting opportunity," she said, approaching the table and laying her hands on it briefly before reaching out to pick up the small control linked to the projector.

"There will be visual aids during this briefing. This is a galaxy," Loghain said, clicking the display forward so that, indeed, a galaxy was displayed.

"Slow down, I need to take notes," Varne said, flatly.

Loghain ignored him.

"You've all seen the preliminary reading, I know you have, and I know none of you are stupid, so I don't really need to slow down here and explain how an entirely new galaxy more-or-less absent of opposition to Imperial interests - or at least absent the vast majority of the forces usually working against us - is a Good Thing, yes?"

Nods all round, or at least a general, unspoken sense of 'yes', which Loghain picked up on. Didn't even have to concentrate, it just washed over her. Kind of made her smile. So nice not having to make the usual effort to see what people were thinking. So tranquil here.

"Good. Local human government - System Alliance - isn't much interest to us right now. Too secular, too cosy with aliens, too happy to be playing politics with aliens and itself, not in any real position to throw its weight around. That, and if we're seen to be working too closely with official channels it might look a bit questionable. Jarrion can get away with that, he's a glorified salesman. Pretending to be an 'ambassador' will only go so far for me. So nothing official yet. Down the line, yes, right now, no."

"So this is going where?" Varne asked. Never a man blessed with an abundance of patience. A personal failing that Loghain hoped he grew out of, else his career might not be as long as she felt it deserved to be.

"It's going unofficial, obviously. We are meeting with a contact from Cerberus. That's where we're going right now, in fact, to meet them," she said, flipping the hololithic display to show a slowly rotating rendition of the Cerberus logo. This was wholly unnecessary, but was a visual aid, so she did it anyway.

Everyone glanced at the logo briefly, unmoved by theatrics.

"These would be the people with a professed and considerable interest in salvaging and utilising alien technology? Just so I'm not getting them confused with a different Cerberus?" Varne asked.

"They're not without their bad habits, I'll admit, but they're the product of a debased culture. That is definitely one thing we're going to be helping them move away from. We'll help them improve. That'll be once we've made contact and…integrated."

Her pause and her tone made this word stick out, and for good reason.

"Integrated?"

"I am picturing - I am envisioning - a healthy and rewarding level of inter-organisational cooperation. Broadly speaking, our goals overlap, or at least overlap in enough areas to be useful. They have infrastructure in place in this galaxy. This is also useful. I know that they've brought at least one person back from the dead, so they have that. That's a handy thing."

"I can see how that might be useful in our line of work," said Crave.

"What's the most useful is their intelligence network, their resources, all of that. They are established. We are not. So we are going to piggyback on their hard work and make use of what they've built. And make it better, obviously," Loghain said.

"I'm sure they'll be thrilled," said Varne.

"They have a professed pro-human agenda. What could be more pro-human than the Imperium? What is the Imperium if not humanity? Granted they may not see the logic of this argument immediately but, well, they'll come around. One way or another."

Varne leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head.

"And once we have access to all of their resources and so on, then…?" He asked.

"That's a step for future us, mostly future me. It won't pay to get ahead of ourselves. But bear in mind that there are dangerous times ahead - dangerous for this galaxy, at anyrate - and what we need to do is ensure that humanity here is well-placed to ride it out and come out comfortably on top. After all, wouldn't do to let them all die on our watch would it?"

"Is that really a possibility? Dying out? For this galaxy, I mean," Varne asked, adding to himself in a mutter and an afterthought: "Still having trouble wrapping my head around this 'other galaxy' thing…"

Loghain ignored the second part. She had trouble, too, but got around it by just blithely accepting it and letting her disquiet fall into a pit she would deal with later. Didn't seem much use questioning what was right in front of you.

"From what I've seen and heard, yes," she said.

"One little crisis, honestly. They wouldn't last five minutes on our side of the fence."

"It hasn't started yet, so let's perhaps not sour things by getting all our hubris aired now. Though of course this is also a galaxy lacking an Emperor and an Imperium and all the stability and order and strength such would provide, so it's sadly inevitable that it is a touch more on the fragile side. Lucky we're here now, then, eh?"

"And what if the head of Cerberus - this illusive man your package mentioned - what if he turns out to not be especially enthusiastic at the prospect of having his organisation co-opted?" Magos Crave asked.

"There won't be any co-option, only co-operation," said Loghain.

Language was very important.

"Obviously. What about when he isn't enthusiastic about co-operation, then?" Crave asked.

"Then we will do our best to convince him of the wisdom of our position," Loghain said.

"And when that doesn't work?" Varne asked.

"Then we shall take appropriate steps," Loghain said, very deliberately, looking directly at him. He got the point.

"Ah. He'll be a new man, eh?"

"If he needs to be."

Varne smiled. It wasn't an especially nice one.

"This plan doesn't really have many specifics, does it?" Crave asked.

Loghain did not like that word. In her mind and in her approach an Inquisitor had to be, above all things, flexible. Not in a moral sense, obviously - morally an Inquisitor had to be rock-solid and unyielding. But in the application of this adamant approach an Inquisitor had to be flexible, weaving around whatever obstacles the Emperor saw fit to place before them in the execution of their duties.

To be specific was to be static, and to be static was to have those obstacles start weaving around you. As it were. Or so she liked to argue whenever her colleagues complained.

"This plan can't really have specifics, at least in the long term. Short term maybe, but that's sort of the point. We are taking it a step at a time and working towards an eventual goal. We'll meet our contact, see how this meeting goes, regardless of how the meeting goes continue to pursue our goal the best way possible, keep going from there. We'll think about each step before we take it, while keeping an eye on where we're going, yes?" Loghain asked, looking around her team.

"Your imagery confuses me, but I suppose I can see what you're driving at," said Crave.

"Wonderful. Glad we're on the same page. Al Bet - you've been quiet. Thoughts?"

"I am a sword in the Emperor's hand, wielded as the Inquisition wills," said al Bet.

"That's not what I asked."

"No, but it is all that matters."

"...fair enough. If you have anything you want to bring up, don't hesitate. My door is always open."

"I do not know what that means," al Bet said.

"Fair enough. Look, team, at the end of the day this isn't that complicated. Ultimately, what we want is human influence - Imperial influence - to spread across this galaxy, as is only right. This won't happen overnight. It probably won't even happen in our lifetimes. But what we can do is ensure that it does happen, that everything is in place to make sure it will happen. That's our job."

"I thought our job was to counter alien influence and threats to the Imperium, its assets, its holdings, and its citizens," said Varne.

"No, that's just our niche. Our job is to protect and further Imperial interests. This is not an opportunity we can afford to pass up. I repeat: an entire new galaxy. And, given what's coming, a galaxy that we can help ensure human primacy in. Can you imagine what the Imperium could do unopposed with a galaxy? What it might let us do with our own galaxy? Think what the Imperium could do without having to counter waaaaghs, hive fleets, tomb worlds, hrud migrations - pick something, imagine not having to deal with it. Imagine!"

"They frown on imagination in the mechanicus," Crave said.

Loghain stared at him on the off-chance that this was an attempt at humour. It was not.

"I'm aware," she said.

The meeting petered out.

"Tali, I know how you feel."

"Shepard, you cannot possibly know how I feel."

I thought about this and thought about trying to argue against it, but realised I really couldn't and really didn't have a leg to stand on. She had me there.

"...point, but the fact remains."

Tali was not happy with me. This was because I'd woken the geth up and had a chat with it. The geth was now a part of the team. Kind of an odd turns of events but for me odd turns of events are pretty normal. I'm not sure how Tali found out about these developments but she did, and she came up to my cabin, and now she's not happy with me.

And, you know, that's fair.

"What were you thinking?" She asks, in tones equal parts angry and disappointed, yet still managing to remain surprisingly composed. A cold fury, I suppose, hopefully softened a bit by what I hope is at least a smidgen of respect for my judgement (and excellent leadership qualities and fine good looks and such).

"I was thinking I wanted some answers from the thing. Got them, too. Or some at least. Enough to be getting along with, from where I'm standing," I said.

I'm not sure what I'd expected a conversation with a geth to be like, but Legion - it was called Legion, the geth, a name chosen by EDI for reasons that make sense in context - was certainly not what I'd imagined. It had been hard to forget I'd been talking with a machine while we'd been talking, but there'd been more there than you might have guessed. Just little hints here and there.

Certainly, they were less hammy than Sovereign had been, if we're talking about conversations with killer robots. Or 'Nazara', or whatever it was apparently actually called. I'll stick with Sovereign, personally. I'm used to it and it's dead anyway, so is it going to complain?

Anyway. Legion. It hadn't been a long conversation, even with my primitive hardware (getting quietly shamed by a machine on account of not being able to process faster-than-light data transfer wasn't something I'd seen happening today). It hadn't really needed to be a long conversation. It got to the point pretty quick. Legion - and by extension, it seems, the bulk of the geth - doesn't like the Reapers, wants to stop the Reapers, figures since I'm already working on that it would make sense to pitch in. More or less.

Hell, made sense to me. Cooperation is better than conflict, as they say. Or, as Legion said, cooperation furthers mutual goals, which is also a pretty neat way of saying it. Certainly knows how to speak my language.

Of course, Tali likely doesn't see things quite that way, and, again, that's fair.

"You don't know what it wants," she said.

"Well, right now it wants to help us stop the Reapers."

Via stopping the Collectors first, but really it's all part of the same deal.

"That's what it says, but the geth were working with Sovereign."

"A splinter group, apparently. Heretics, I'm told. Evocative term."

Did seem a very odd choice of word to me, for machines I mean. Maybe that was a translation issue? Nuance? Or maybe they really, really meant it? I don't know. Still, strong word. Strong connotations. Seems to catch Tali off-guard.

"What?" She asks.

"Yeah, I was surprised too. Legion - uh, the geth down there is called Legion, to clarify - said the bulk of the geth find the ones we were gunning our way through reprehensible. Not in those words, of course, but that was the impression I got. A difference of opinion."

That definitely seems to catch her off-guard. I see her recoil a little.

"That's not -" she says, but then shakes her head, resolve stiffening. "It doesn't matter. You can't trust the geth. You can't trust this geth. They don't think like we do."

I shrug.

"You know the geth better than I do, Tali, I'm just going by what I was told and by how they could have shot me and very deliberately didn't. That's not a definitive test of character, I'll admit, but Legion went to a lot of trouble to say it's on our side. If it wanted to sabotage us, putting a round through my skull would have been simpler than pretending to be our friend. I think it's worth giving it a chance."

Given the choice I'd much rather have the geth with the big gun standing next to me, pointing that gun away from me. Personally speaking.

Tali looks at me, then I see her blink. She sighs, deflates a little bit, little bit of the tension letting out, shoulders lowering.

"Alright Shepard. I'll go along with this. Because it's you. If it was anyone else I wouldn't believe any of it and I'd be out. But impossible things have a habit of happening when you're around," she said.

She wasn't wrong.

"Don't I know it. I died, did you hear about that?" I asked, and it's hard to tell but I think I get a tiny bit of a smile out of her with that one. It sounds like I do when she replies, at least.

"Did you now?"

"Yeah. You probably missed it."

"Well, I have been very busy," she says, going quiet a moment and then adding: "When it turns on us, though…"

I hold up a hand because I can see where she's coming from and where she's going.

"If Legion turns on us you have my permission to shotgun them in half and my further permission to tell me 'I told you so' from that point on until the end of time, okay? You can carve it on my tombstone."

"...okay. Feels weird to say 'thank you' to anything involving a tombstone…" she says.

"Eh, already died once, not a big deal. But thanks Tali, means a lot. I want everyone pulling together on this because I want everyone coming home, okay? Everyone in the team can go back to bickering once we're done, but until then I want the team to be The Team, okay?"

"Okay Shepard, I get it."

"Good, I'm glad. Also glad you brought this to me now and didn't let it fester. Alright, now you go back to whatever it was you were doing before, Tali. Go have a look at one of those laser rifles. We'll be off and away doing something important before you know it, swapping high-fives in the smoking ruins of the Collector base."

She didn't really know what to say to this, and just sort of left. Fair.

I'm probably a pretty boring conversationalist these days in that most conversations will, if they go on too long, loop around to how everyone in the galaxy needs to relax and bury the hatchet and get on the same page or we'll all be killed by the Reapers, but in my defence I do have, as I've said, the dying scream of a people on the way to extinction carved into my brain. And I did speak to one of the Reapers who did say this was the plan. Makes it kind of, you know, present for me. Not an abstract.

Gives me a unique position, you might say.

Still weird that I spoke to a geth. A geth! That's a novelty, putting it lightly.

Although, if what Legion has said is true and the bulk of the geth don't actually like the Reapers all that much and are in fact just as much in the firing line as the rest of us, well, I'm probably going to end up having to talk to the geth again when things start heating up because the more the merrier, right? Can't forge your own future if you've been blown to bits by the Old Machines, right? Might need some help? We might need some help? Co-operation furthers mutual goals?

But that's a bridge I'll cross when I come to it. If I come to it. If we survive this bit.

One thing at a time, eh?

Putting my feet up on my desk and I grab that weirdo dataslate of Jarrion's and try to read up a little more background on the Imperium - just to pass the time, really - and I get to enjoy a pleasant few, serene minutes on my own without interruption before the next interruption happens, a quiet chime informing me that someone wants a word.

"Yes?" I ask the air.

"There's something on the extranet you need to see. There's been - well, you should look for yourself, Commander."

It was Yeoman Chambers. Unusual.

And ah, another of those 'You need to see this' moments where no-one explains what it is. I never liked those. Still, sometimes it is easier to just look for yourself than have someone try to explain, so fine.

Something about the sound of her voice that kind of unsettles me though. She sounds rattled.

"Any hints?" I ask.

"It's the top story right now," she says.

Helpful. I take my feet off the desk and go to the console.

It doesn't take me long to find what I'm pretty sure she was talking about:

"Batarian colony attacked."

That's new. Must be quite something to be so prominently newsworthy, too. A big attack, I mean, something notable. They don't throw every little pirate raid up into the headlines, generally speaking. The collectors spreading the net wider? What?

I'm not sure, so I keep scrolling, keep reading, keep looking at what few, low-quality images have managed to somehow be smuggled out. Details were sketchy, obviously, it being a Batarian colony and all, but it was apparently far enough away from central control that prying eyes had managed to capture this attack.

Why was this important, I was still wondering.

And there we see a ship, a human ship, an Imperial human ship, bombarding the planet. It's a distant shot and not the highest quality, but there's no mistaking the make of that ship or what it's doing. Full-on raining fire. This wasn't targeted destruction of assets or anything like that, this wasn't limited-damage pinpoint bombardment of military installations or whatever. This was razing. This was apocalyptic.

I've seen broadsides in my time - would have been a surprise if I hadn't. You get a lot of guns on the sides of a cruiser, and they can kick out a hell of a lightshow. But this was something else. Turns out you can pack in a scary number of guns if your gundeck is a couple of clicks long, and when you open up with that, well..

I wouldn't want to be on the other end. Or standing on the surface of that planet. If there's even anything left to be called a surface under all that. Shit. I'm not the biggest fan of batarians which, given my service record, shouldn't come as the biggest surprise, but no-one deserves that, do they? Shit, again.

This isn't good, to put it mildly. To put it less mildly this is pretty fucking terrible. Monstrous. It's so insanely ridiculous and horrendous I'm having trouble putting my head around it. How many people have died? No estimates yet but, looking at it, it has to be a staggering amount, and that is overwhelming. The kind of numbers you can't wrap your head around.

How has this happened? Why? Why did he do it? Was this always going to happen? Was it only a matter of time? I'd picked up on the xenophobia but Jarrion had seemed pretty stable, all things considered.

What was this? Where had this come from? Why had he done this?

And as horrified as I am - and I am pretty horrified, this is a nightmare - there's still that detached, pragmatic part of me that's saying that this is just another fucking problem that I'm probably going to have to deal with. Add it to the list.

But as I'm staring and trying to think about what the hell this all means and what this will cause, something is nagging at me. I'm not really aware of this at first, just have an itch on my brain that tells me what I'm looking at doesn't add up, but I'm so distracted by what's happened I figure it's that - I figure what doesn't add up is what's happened, what I've seen happen.

But it's not. Sure, what I'm seeing doesn't make sense, but that's not what my brain is trying to grasp at. There's something obvious I'm looking at that I'm not seeing. The itch continues.

There's another quiet chime as someone elsewhere on-board tries to get my attention.

"Yes?" I ask, tearing my eyes away from the long-distance, unhelpful image. You'd think someone would have cleaned that up by now. The angle didn't help - can barely make out Jarrion's ship. Guess you take what you can get out of Batarian space, but hell. It's obviously his ship - who else has something that looks like that? - but beyond that not a whole lot to go on. Not a lot to make me feel certain. Not a lot to scratch that mental itch.

Anyway. The chime. It's Chambers again.

"The Council wants to speak with you, Commander. They say it's urgent," she says. I put my face in my hands and try not to sigh - I'll sigh once Chambers is off the line.

"I bet they do."

Galaxy's go-to woman for anything you need sorting out, apparently. Knew it'd be my problem. Guess I'm technically the expert here.

Shit.

The problem - or at least my problem - with crossovers, I feel, is that either one trudges through canon while something entirely unexpected happens, which can be hard to explain when by rights things should be different, or else the story veers wildly off in an entirely new direction, which can be more fun but then lays the responsibility for that new direction entirely onto the hapless sod who decided it was a good idea to do the thing in the first place.

Which is to say, I guess anything bad that happens from here on it is entirely my fault. Sigh.

(Also, no conversation with Legion, sorry, as the first conversation is really just "Hi, yes, not all geth are bad, most of us don't like the Reapers much either - can I join the team?" and I felt I could sum that up, break up the wall of conversation, then have some Tali. So ran my thinking, anyway. I like Tali.

And I can't entirely remember Tali's initial attitude to Legion but I like to think I did my best.)